Musings about Assessments and things

Posted in General by Mary Huston, PhD; MS, CCC-SLP

I recently read a great post by another SLP, Tatyana Elleseff, over at Smart Speech Therapy LLC.

I strongly recommend that you go read it. It’s a great post about WHY she does what she does, and why some parents (and schools) request her to do it. Intrigued yet? What are you waiting for – go read it. It’s titled: Special Education Disputes and Comprehensive Language Testing: What Parents, Attorneys, and Advocates Need to Know.

Tatyana’s post gave me some pause for thought…and then of course I had to follow the rabbit trail my mind seems to take sometimes. Ultimately, I came away with some questions and deep thoughts about our profession. Continue reading →

10Mar2015

How does your articulation assessment measure up?

Posted in research by Mary Huston, PhD; MS, CCC-SLP

It’s hard to believe it’s March…and time for Research Tuesday (again!). I remember being in grad school (or maybe undergrad) and doing a group project on articulation assessments. We were split into groups (or we split ourselves into groups, I don’t remember), and we were required to study an assigned articulation assessment, determine validity, specificity, etc… and critique the administration, picture stimuli, results, etc. It was an interesting assignment. I remember making the power point for it, and I remember talking with the Dean of the department and telling him I wanted to update the test we had (it was horribly out of date), and he said that’d be a great thesis or dissertation project. LOL. Too bad, I can’t remember the name of the test now (I could go look it up, but it’d take too much energy.)

Anyway…When I came upon today’s article, it reminded me of that assignment…and I thought it was important to review. So, without further adieu I bring you Research Tuesday! Continue reading →

1Oct2012

Adventures in Assessment

Posted in General by Mary Huston, PhD; MS, CCC-SLP

Almost everyone is familiar with the need to assessment for eligibility for special education. Some areas require 1.5 or 2 standard deviations below the norm. Some areas require as little as a discrepancy between scores and the SLP’s recommendation. Assessments can take as little as a half-hour to as long as 10 hours and are completely dependent on the student and the assessments required. For instance, in my school, a student who is being considered for a learning disorder would most likely under go an ability test (1-2 hours), an achievement test (1-3 hours), and language testing (2-4 hours). Of course, it would be broken up over several days, but it is still a significant number of hours missed from the classroom instruction. Just language testing alone with no need for achievement testing can be time-consuming.